How a wartime regime of sexual slavery still stains Japan-South Korea relations - A two-level game analysis of the 2015 ‘comfort women’ agreement between Japan and South Korea

In a time of growing concerns regarding the rise of China as well as the threatening behaviour of North Korea, the Japan-South Korea ‘comfort women’ agreement of 2015, formed during South Korea’s Park Geun-Hye presidency and Japan’s Shinzo Abe’s second Prime Minister term, sought to create an environment where Japan and South Korea could pursue closer collaborations. When the agreement failed in settling the historic dispute, many argued the reason to be interests not in line with a victim-oriented approach, but rather great power politics. Domestic pressure and general low public support for the agreement resulted in the President Moon Jae-in administration of South Korea dissolving the foundation formed as a part of the agreement in 2019, effectively annulling the agreement. To theoretically explain how the agreement of 2015 was reached through negotiations my study analyses the structure of Japan and South Korea’s win-sets, the central mechanism of the two-level game theory Robert Putnam introduced in 1988. Putnam’s theory seeks to explain how states achieve international agreements and what roles strategic actors play in maximizing their respective countries’ interests. This thesis thus explores the diplomatic context of the ‘comfort women’ issue, uniting the Japanese and South Korean perspectives on the domestic and international levels. Further, it also examines what caused the agreement to be annulled by looking at the tension at the domestic Level in South Korea. By applying Putnam’s framework to this case, I will also further illuminate how two-level games are played out. The findings of this study suggest that the agreement was reached as a result of the South Korean side, under the Park Geun-Hye administration, choosing to opt for an agreement with Japan on the ‘comfort women’ issue not strictly in line with the public interest. This consequently ended up being the basis for why the agreement was unilaterally annulated as the Moon Jae-in administrations preferences seemingly harmonized more with the South Korean publics wishes. Japan’s behaviour during and after the agreement was settled did not underline reason to believe there to be challenges with the implementation of the agreement on their end as they managed to meet the South Korean demands, proving their motivation to solve the issue. Still, it becomes clear that neither South Korea nor Japan had the victim’s interests in mind in the making of the agreement, which undeniably also is the reason it failed at settling the issue